Harvester of Light
by fieldagent85
Summary: Newlywed Jonathan and Martha struggle to get on the same wavelength when it comes to Christmas.


Before she moved to Smallville, Christmas meant nothing to Martha Kent. But unless she switched on the television and caught a corny holiday rerun of The Waltons, it didn't bother her. Upon moving to the country following her wedding, however, her life more or less became The Waltons.

Their very first Christmas among the blissfully wed came only a month after they got married. Still hopelessly wrapped up in the early honeymoon phase of their marriage, all Martha had wanted out of the holidays was time alone with her husband, time off from the daily routine of farm work and her lessons in domestication.

To that end, she had been more than pleased when Christmas Eve brought little more than an entire day spent in bed, during which time Jonathan's parents had been strictly forbidden to go upstairs for any reason. The living situation had been slightly uncomfortable for everyone involved, due to the veritable tragedy of allowing parents to sleep just down the hall from incorrigible newlyweds. Fortunately, on Christmas Eve, realizing what the penalty of going upstairs would be, Hiram and Jessica Kent were more than happy to enjoy their gingerbread and eggnog in the living room in front of the fire.

By late afternoon, his lips had covered every inch of her body, twice, and were intent on visiting a few select places a third time. They were traveling down the smooth, flat surface of her stomach when she inadvertently dropped the bomb on him. "You know, I just do not understand what the big deal is."

Without looking up, the only sign that he had even heard her was a faint "mmm…?" murmured against her skin.

"Christmas," she clarified, casually.

He stopped short at this, pausing just above her navel, lifting his head to look at her. "What?"

"It's all so _commercial_," Martha lamented, very clearly not grasping how troubled her husband was by the notion of Christmas not being a 'big deal.' "Really, when you get right down to it, it's not even about anything anymore. It's not about Jesus, it's not about Mary, or some not-so-wise men, or grand, glowing angels. It's about the highest, most shameful form of materialism known to man, it's about hopelessly obnoxious music, manipulative little plants that con you into kissing someone, fattening foods, and good, old-fashioned Catholic guilt. It might as well be a glorified Lent."

For a long, seemingly endless moment, her husband could do nothing more than stare at her in disbelief, his body still suspended above hers. It's times like these, times when the cynical city girl comes out, that he finds himself unable to figure out what to do with her. "You're kidding me, right?" He asked with a nervous laugh.

"No," she replied, matter-of-factly, as if the question did not merit asking. "I'm not."

Jonathan let out a sigh, then crawled up the bed to lie beside her. "You don't like Christmas," he said flatly, summarizing the situation. "Well, I'll be damned. You think that's grounds for divorce?" Martha whacked his arm, feigning offense. "Ow. Jesus, for someone less than half my size, you sure can pack a punch."

"Not everyone is a fan of the holidays, Jonathan," she said firmly, turning onto her side to face him.

"This is the first I'm hearing of it," he admitted, truly baffled.

"Color me shocked. Look at where you grew up, where you live." Martha gestures toward the window, revealing a snow-dusted, picturesque scene out of a Thomas Kincaid painting. "You have _carolers_ here, Jonathan. Carolers! This sickeningly wholesome place is tailor-made for motion pictures."

His eyes widened considerably. "_Wow_. Okay. Well."

Martha shook her head, more angry at herself than anything. "I'm sorry, I just…my family didn't really…do Christmas when I was growing up. The closest we ever came to holiday festivities was the annual Christmas party at Dad's firm. But it never came home with us. Ever."

"Sweetheart," Jonathan sighed, tucking a strand of her shimmering auburn hair back behind her ear. "The holidays have absolutely nothing to do with your father anymore. They're about us now. _Our _family. New memories."

Martha shook her head sadly. "You can't just take a girl out of the city and put Christmas back into the girl. It's not that simple."

But Jonathan Kent was stubborn, and her resistance was no match for his fierce determination.

When they finally saw fit to drag each other out of bed, lest his parents suspected ill of them, Jonathan set about recovering his wife's long dormant Christmas spirit. This was much to the amusement of Hiram and Jessica, who enjoyed watching their son's valiant efforts a little too much.

The first thing he did after leading her downstairs was offer her a glass of eggnog. "Does it have alcohol in it?" was her dry response.

Then he had convinced his mother to school her in the art of making Christmas cookies. She had gone along with it, if only to please her mother-in-law, relying heavily on the eggnog to sustain her. She burned the first batch. And the second. The third was salvageable.

Not yet discouraged, Jonathan's next move was to bring in the Christmas music, his secret weapon. While his parents watched from the kitchen, he threw on a record of "Jingle Bell Rock" in the living room and dragged his reluctant wife into the middle of the floor.

"Honey, is this really necessary?" She asked with a heavy sigh.

"Yes," he insisted without hesitation. "Work with me here."

Leading the dance, he somehow saw fit to guide her movement with several words of encouragement and instruction, prompting amused smiles and incredulous looks from both his unwitting student and his parents.

"Jonathan."

"Hmm?"

She smirked up at him. "You're teaching a dancer to dance."

"Oh." Yet another aspect of her metropolitan life before him that he managed to forget on occasion. "Right. Sorry."

That effectively ended the Christmas music tactic. A few minutes later, long after the sun had gone down and the snow-covered farm was lit only by various festive lights hung outside, he had her bundled up and on the front porch.

Turning to him, her arms folded across her chest in a feeble attempt at warmth, she raised one skeptical eyebrow. "Are you going to snowball me to death and bury me in an ice tomb?"

He merely rolled his eyes in response, taking her glove-covered hand in his and leading her off the porch. "You're lucky you're so damn beautiful in the cold or I'd be seriously considering it right now." With a surreptitious smile, he led her down the driveway, close but still far enough away that both the bright and cheerfully decorated barn and yellow house seemed like a painting hung before them.

"Come on," he said, moving to stand behind her, his arms enveloping her instinctively. "You can't tell me that isn't a sight to see."

Martha sighed. "I'm not discounting the value of _winter_, I'm saying…"

Jonathan turned her around in his arms to face him. "All right, lady Scrooge, enough. I love you, wildly and fantastically, but I'm not so sure that love is any match for your cranky Christmas blues. Is this how it's going to be when we have kids running around this place? Daddy's hanging Christmas lights while Mommy's curled up in bed with an oversized glass of eggnog and a Stephen King novel?" When she glanced down, his hand reached out for her chin and lifted her head to look at him. "That tough, cynical city girl exterior doesn't fool me. I know you want to love Christmas just as much as I do love it, so quit being as stubborn as your old man and let it happen."

For a moment, she stared up at him wordlessly, until a smile crept over her lips. "You know, you're really cute when you're lecturing me."

He breathed a sigh of relief, shaking his head with a grin. "And do you know how hard it is to lecture you lookin' like that?" She fluttered her eyelashes coyly. "Yeah, you know exactly how hard it is, you little vixen."

Martha took his hand with a smile then and began leading him back toward the farmhouse in a tranquil silence of mutual understanding, snow falling all around them.

"For the record, you are a _terrible _dancer, Jonathan Kent."


End file.
